A game of thrones, Elgin style

Fifty-five individuals and organizations throughout Elgin ordered and decorated Adirondack chairs for the Thrones of Summer competition — this year’s public art exhibition.

Artists can vie for the glory of having their chairs voted as the best by community members and those same community members can vie for prizes based on how many chairs they went to see.

For Elgin resident Christine Mitchell, competition doesn’t really factor into it, but she plans to see all of the chairs nonetheless.

Elgin Community Network is directing the summer-long program in partnership with a host of Elgin businesses and organizations including the Gail Borden Public Library, city of Elgin, Elgin Climate Change Organization, Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce and Downtown Neighborhood Association. The first-year organizers asked participants to decorate dinosaurs; then bicycles and rain barrels. Adirondack chairs are just the most recent of the creative canvasses.

“The bikes were interesting and the rain barrels were all neat because they were beautiful pieces of art,” Mitchell said. “But this, people have tended to take the chairs and do something so different with them.”

Mitchell points to the meaningful theme of Elgin Police Department’s Blue Knight memorial chair or the creative Elgin Symphony Orchestra piece that has been decorated like a cello.

Elginites like Mitchell have been able to pick up “passports” from the Gail Borden Public Library all month and fill in the artist’s names for the various “thrones” to prove they saw them. The goal is to see as many thrones as possible by July 11, when the chairs will be moved to the library for a voting portion of the competition and then ultimately auctioned off.

Passports can be turned in to the library for a chance at winning a prize from the drawing. For those who see all 55 thrones, a special drawing will be held.

Mitchell hasn’t been driven by the chance to win a prize. She just said once she started looking for them, she hasn’t been able to stop.

Mitchell has lived in Elgin for 10 years and worked in the city since 1993. It hasn’t taken much extra effort to seek out the decorated chairs, and the program hasn’t brought her into previously unexplored corners of Elgin’s downtown. But that’s what organizers hope it will prompt less active residents to do: get into downtown.

“Any kind of event that really helps bring the community together helps our community be more like a neighborhood,” Mitchell said. “I always tell people we’re like the biggest Mayberry ever.”

The Thrones of Summer is an excuse to get everyone talking about something nice instead of negative, another plus for Mitchell.

For anyone still trying to see all the chairs in their original locations, they’ll be out until July 11 before they relocate to Gail Borden to be voted on by the community and left on display for the remainder of the month. On July 31, the chairs will be exhibited and auctioned off at Art and Soul on the Fox/Passeggiata, Elgin’s largest art festival.

Mitchell said she has one in mind she’d like to take home with her, but she’s keeping it a secret in hopes others won’t try to win it.

For more information about events connected to the public art, find Adirondacks — Thrones of Summer 2011 on Facebook.